...

yum install git*

...

git checkout release-4.6

• Retrieve the latest commits from git repo:

git svn rebase

• Switch to your feature branch:

git checkout super-feature

• Rebase your branch against the active development branch release-4.6

git rebase release-4.6

Git is quite efficient at merging your changes during rebase. Check here about how to resolve conflicts if you have any (not sure where "here" was meant to be, but 'git mergetool' is useful).
Now you're ready to generate the patches.

git format-patch

 release-4.6

Or you can redirect your patches to another directory:

git format-patch

 release-4.6 -o ~/patches

Git will generate one patch file for every commit on the branch. Since git lets you modify the history of the commits you can generate a series of patches that can show the logical development of your feature. Alternatively you can choose to generate a single patch like this:

git

 diff release-4.6 > super-feature.patch

You can attach patches to JIRA issues or send them on the list for discussion.

Let's assume that you have been hacking for a while on a branch (say: XECS-2387) and your work spans more than one component (in this example, let's assume: sipXbridge and sipXconfig ). You want to commit your sipXbridge changes to the version control system, because you are happy with them but want to submit some other changes as a patch to the owner of that other component because he wants to inspect your patch before accepting it. Here is how to proceed.

...

git commit sipXconfig/ -m"XECS-2378: sipxconfig changes for supporting hidden parameters"

git commit sipXbridge/ -m"XECS-2378: sipxbridge changes for supporting hidden parameters"

git format-patch

 release-4.6 -o ~/patches

git rebase XECS-2378

 release-4.6
git rebase -i HEAD~3

and remove the line that you want to remove when the editor brings up the interactive screen (i.e. the sipXconfig patch in this case). Then do the

git commit

as above. Pick up the other patch and attach it to the issue, thus maintaining friendly relations with the owner of the other component.

...

If someone sends you a patch generated with git

git checkout super-feature
git am -3 0005-some-fixes.patch

That will commit the patch to super-feature branch - it will preserve the name of the patch author and their comments.

'-3' means that git will try to merge the patch. If there are conflicts use:

...

to resolve them.
You can list multiple commits, or an entire directory full of patches:

git am -3 patches/*patch

You can make your changes on top of the patch and commit them separately. Or you can amend the previous commit with your changes.

git commit -a --amend

You can also easily accept/review patches generated with svn diff, gendiff etc.QUERY: ???? is this prior line a correct syntax for a git example – RPH

...

git apply -p0 0005-some-fixes.patch

That will apply the patch but not commit it (if patch was not generated by git it does not have enough information to create commit). It's slightly more convenient than using patch command since it'll behave in an atomic way (the apply will succeed or fail - it won't leave your workspace partially patched)

More tips

• If you know subversion pretty well check this out: http://git.or.cz/course/svn.html
• There are a few tech talks with helpful information about git:
  • Video
    • Contributing with git
    • Talk at Google by Linus Torvalds FIXME
    • A more detailed talk at Google by Randal Schwartz
  • Audio
    • An episode of the podcast "FLOSS Weekly" with a discussion of git with Leo Laporte, Randal Schwartz, and git maintainer Junio Hamano
  • Book
    • Git Magic, by Ben Lynn
  • Reference
    • Git Reference Card

There is several git GUIs - if you use Gnome giggle is a good choice

yum install giggle

giggle &

If you encounter problems when rebasing or merging 'git mergetool' command can be used to launch graphical 3-way merging tool. Make sure that you run it from the root of your git repository.

'checkout' and 'status' are probably 2 most commonly used commands. To add svn-like aliases for them:

git config --global alias.co checkout

git config --global alias.st status

And now you can use those aliases, 'st' and 'co' instead of the fully spelled out keywords:

git st # instead of git status

git

 co release-4.6 # instead of git checkout release-4.6

Enable colorized output for various commands:

git config --global color.branch auto

git config --global color.diff auto

git config --global color.interactive auto

git config --global color.status auto

If you use bash, use git-completion.bash. It enables simply pressing: <TAB> to display a list of potential commands, arguments and parameters. For example:

git checkout <TAB>

...

Source it in your ~/.bashrc:

. /path-to/git-completion.bash

To have the current branch appear on your bash prompt:

export PS1='[xecsdev:\u@\h`__git_ps1` \W]\$ '

If you want to roll back to a particular point in history ( say some feature that is currently broken, but formerly worked a week ago and is blocking your progress ): Look at your git repository using giggle. You will see each commit has a global UUID. You can pick out the specific point in history when the world still looked rosy by doing:

git checkout -b proxy-still-worked UUID